Stronger cash markets this time of year isn t unusual as farmers are busy farming and don t pay attention to the markets and sell grain, but this year, bids are being led higher by ethanol producers buying corn. The real issue is why are the ethanol producers buying corn at these prices and why haven t they already covered their needs? One trader commented, there seems to be plenty of corn available out on the farms, but it is in the wrong place, the eastern belt, not the western belt...

Not only will the Kool-Aid peddlers pass out the Dixie Cups again, they have added a new wrinkle to their solution: the elimination of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) as a measure to increase corn acres to keep prices low in order to expand exports and thereby provide, once again, prosperity for all. Their solution to the farm crisis of the late 1970s was to lower prices paid to farmers in order to reclaim the export volume of 1973-74 and prosperity would follow. With the...

However, he planted corn across the top of all of them and I had a devil of a time cutting the grass between the plots because the sweet corn blocked my exit. I brought him home enough sweet corn seed from the sheep folks up at Platteville to fill those plots. Sweet corn adventure makes new friends, crop. With as many plots he has worked up, he probably will have me with a stand along the road selling corn. After he got done with his tilling I asked, What are you going to plant in all this...

State farmers lose many fruit crops, corn and wheat. The sudden cold snap wiped out many fruit crops and hurt the state's corn and wheat. It's been a disheartening spring for Tennessee growers and the effects will linger into summer. April arrived with promise, but then it froze for about five straight nights. March had been unseasonably warm. And if that wasn't bad enough, snow followed.

By Peter Harriman pharrima@argusleader.com Published: May 24, 2007 Can you make ethanol out of rice? Unless the James River Valley dries out, that might be plan B for farmers who had hoped to shift acreage to corn, cashing in on high prices driven by the ethanol industry. Some farmers are moving to soybeans in place of corn because of the later planting dates forced upon them by wet field conditions. By Peter Harriman pharrima@argusleader.com Published: May 24, 2007 Can you make ethanol...